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Why and how ‘programmatic’ is emerging as key to real-time marketing success
Southern European report
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The real-time digital economy is here, turning many industries upside down and leaving marketers across Europe wrestling with empowered customers and digitally fuelled competition.
Marketers face an explosion of data and platforms that are transforming owned, earned and paid media – often blurring the
lines between each. As digital becomes central to customer interaction, programmatic technology has emerged as the
driving force for a new vision of digital advertising that integrates paid media into real-time marketing. This report
looks at the current state of programmatic in Europe and explores why and how it is viewed as pivotal to the future of
real-time marketing.
August 2014
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Headlines
175 agencies, publishers and marketers from Spain, Italy and
Portugal joined nearly 500 of their European counterparts in
sharing their latest thinking on digital marketing and programmatic
advertising.
As is the case across the rest of Europe, budget is no longer a key
driver of advertising success in Southern Europe; instead success
is due to a combination of creativity and targeting.
Southern European organisations see improved targeting as the
biggest benefit of programmatic and are turning to programmatic in
order to provide competitive advantage (motivation for 68% of
adopters).
Across the entire Continent, Media Buyers lead the way in
programmatic adoption; but Marketers are lagging.
In addition, Southern Europe is falling behind its neighbours in
terms of digital and programmatic adoption. In particular, usage of
programmatic amongst Publishers is much lower in Southern
Europe than elsewhere.
And barriers to forecast growth are real. In particular, skills gaps
and budget battles are preventing adoption.
The Southern European ecosystem appears to be overwhelmingly
turning towards advertising agencies to provide the necessary
programmatic capabilities…
…but there is a severe deficit of strategic planning – only one
quarter (28%) of organisations in Southern Europe have a
programmatic strategy in place (vs. 42% across Europe).
However, there is a determination to overcome the barriers to
programmatic – nine in ten organisations in Southern Europe think
programmatic will be a very important part of digital advertising in
the future; one in five think it will be dominant.
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Contents
Introductions
Research introduction 4
AppNexus introduction 5
WARC introduction 6
HiMedia introduction 7
IAB introduction 8
Research findings
1. It’s a digital world 9
2. Money can’t buy you love 10
3. Convergence in a real-time world 11
4. Real-time requires a data-driven mindset 12
5. Programmatic answers the real-time question - that’s WHY it’s growing 14
6. Getting to grips with programmatic 15
7. Navigating the obstacles 18
I. Skills shortages 18
ii. Budget battles 19
iii. Trust issues 20
8. Conclusions 21
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Research Introduction: Context & Reach
Programmatic advertising is growing rapidly and is now a major part of the digital advertising
economy across Europe. But while much has been written about WHAT programmatic is,
and analysts repeatedly increase their predictions of how big it will be, very little has been
said about WHY and HOW the programmatic market is growing.
We think that understanding WHY and HOW is incredibly important for marketers, agencies
and publishers. That’s why Circle Research, in association with AppNexus, IAB Europe and
WARC, went to the ‘front-line’ of advertising across Europe, seeking the opinions of some of
the most highly respected professionals from across the advertising ecosystem, to discover
what the industry is really thinking about the key issues.
Why are they moving to programmatic or, if they are not, why not? What are the key
challenges, worries, expectations and opportunities across the ecosystem? How are these
being addressed and what impact will this have on skills needed in the industry, the creativity
of digital advertising or the nature of the relationships between buyers and sellers?
We asked the industry these questions through April and May 2014 and received 626 full
responses from Marketers, Media Buyers, Publishers and Advertising Agencies. Responses
came from across Europe, with especially strong representation from the UK (165), Spain
(103), Germany (96), France (96) and Italy (66).
Those who took part together control over €3billion of advertising spend at some of Europe’s
largest advertising organisations:
This report focusses on findings from Spain, Italy and Portugal. If you would like to
receive further reports and commentary from AppNexus please register for News at:
www.appnexus.com/subscribe
The research was conducted by independent, ISO20252 accredited, B2B research specialists, Circle Research (www.circle-research.com).
For any questions on the research programme, please contact:
Graeme – graeme.cade@circle-research.com
For the purposes of this report, we consider programmatic to be the use of technology to improve
the efficiency and effectiveness of internet advertising; helping marketers to reach their desired
audience and publishers to best monetize their inventory.
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AppNexus Introduction –
Programmatic & the Real-Time Revolution
We are at an inflection point for the marketing industry.
The digitally empowered consumer is harder to reach, more difficult to engage and actively
hostile to much of the marketing they receive. To stand out, brands are living in the moment;
seeking to be contextually relevant, useful and engaging.
This real-time revolution is fuelling a new level of interaction, but is proving difficult to sustain
and integrate across all media. The Superbowl or Oscars moment remains largely isolated
from broader campaigns, burning brightly but dying fast. No matter how strong the idea or
how deep the engagement, the industry has lacked the agility to react, adapt and scale.
Unsurprising when the way that advertising is bought and sold often owes more to the last
century than the digital era.
Yet over the last decade a revolution has been quietly brewing. It’s been called many things
– RTB, RTA, AdTech, Programmatic – but the goal has always been the same: to give
advertisers the agility to tailor their message for an audience of one, anywhere on the web
and in less than the 200 milliseconds it takes a page to load. It has massive implications for
brands, advertising & media buying agencies and the website publishers that use advertising
to fund their free content.
As consumers migrate to an always-connected, mobile, multiscreen and real-time world,
advertisers must follow or risk losing relevance. Traditional models do not scale and so
programmatic has emerged as the major driver of real-time digital engagement, with
analysts predicting that it will account for as much 60% of all digital advertising by 2017.
AppNexus is powering the shift towards programmatic. Today, we're over 500 AppNexians
worldwide dedicated to making advertising a more efficient and effective tool for marketers,
publishers, programmatic media companies, and data providers alike. We provide trading
solutions and power marketplaces that enable the whole advertising ecosystem — and
eventually, the Internet — to work better. We initiated this research to empower our partners
to see the whole system so that they can to capitalize on this rising tide.
Graham Wylie - Senior Director, EMEA & APAC Marketing, AppNexus
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Warc Introduction – Making data work for business
Warc is proud to partner with AppNexus and IAB Europe on this important research study
investigating the adoption of programmatic across Europe.
We believe the study comes at exactly the right time. Warc’s goal is to provide our users with
the knowledge they need to grow their business. That is particularly apt when it comes to
programmatic, which offers huge potential for brands to raise the effectiveness of digital
marketing, but is held back by confusion and lack of understanding.
Brands are missing a trick if they see programmatic as a subset media specialism that only
trading experts can understand. Brands that use online and offline data smartly to
understand their customers and respond to their needs gain a competitive advantage. It is
about creative use of data, and building online ad strategies that respond both to context
and to a consumer’s online behaviour.
Digital budgets are growing: Warc’s Consensus Forecast suggests global internet ad spend
will rise 14.1% in 2014, ahead of the 5.2% rise in total expenditure during that time. But the
uptake of programmatic faces a number of hurdles: lack of trust between buyers and sellers
of programmatic, lack of in-house skills, and a lag in knowledge on the part of marketers,
and indeed many agencies.
This study is an important step in opening up the topic and overcoming these obstacles. We
hope it will help the industry as a whole make their advertising smarter and more effective.
David Tiltman – Head of Content, Warc
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HiMedia Introduction – The Real-Time Targeting is now
As a leading ad network in Europe, HiMedia guides advertisers and publishers in the
development of their digital strategies. At HiMedia Italy, we strive to accompany our clients
through market innovations to make the most of new opportunities. We hope this study will
help to further open up the dialogue on the implications of real time solutions for our industry.
HiMedia started the transition to Programmatic & RTB three years ago and we are honoured
to have entertained a preferred partnership with AppNexus ever since. From the start, we
knew this was the right direction to take, and took this chance to learn a lot and gain a strong
expertise.
Today, this transition is close to complete for the group’s advertising activities. The main
trends which we identified in the beginning still persist to confirm the increasing importance
of the use of technologies in the buy and sell process in the advertising field.
But are the publishers and advertisers ready for the change?
Despite having enthusiastically shifted our inventories to programmatic buying, it could take
HiMedia Italy several more months for our Programmatic activities to take over that of
traditional display.
Every day we face resistance to the adoption of programmatic. But when we have the
chance to explain to both publishers and marketers its implications for targeting
opportunities, something magical happens. Both parties understand our vision of
programmatic: it’s the perfect real time targeting! Marketers can ensure that their budgets
are entirely directed to the right audience, while publishers can sell at the right price 100% of
their inventory. As a matter of fact, the power of programmatic will dramatically increase
when Publishers decide to use it not only for the remnant inventory but for every single
impression.
This study fulfills a lack of knowledge and, by dealing with the entire ecosystem (Marketers,
Media Buyers; Publishers and Advertising Agencies), can help a better and proper
development of the Italian market.
Carlo Poss – CEO HiMedia Italia
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IAB Europe Introduction – Driving investment in digital
The digital display advertising market has shown no signs of slowing its rapid evolution of
the last few years. Technology innovation has helped marketers understand how they can
better reach and engage with their customers on a real-time basis and this has helped to
drive more investment into digital at a time when other media are struggling to deal with
fragmentation.
Whilst digital has enabled the consumer to have a new ‘voice’, better tools have enabled
brands to manage the myriad of conversations by channel, time, topic and device.
This AppNexus/IAB Europe/WARC research helps us to understand why and how the
planning and buying process is changing and it will be complementary to the forthcoming
IAB Europe White Paper on Programmatic Trading which illustrates the opportunity
Programmatic provides across the diverse European markets.
IAB Europe is committed to delivering market-making research that demonstrates the value
of digital advertising for publishers, agencies and advertisers, helps to educate policy
makers on this complex topic and illustrate the benefit of our business to Europe’s bottom
line.
Alison Fennah – Senior Business Advisor, IAB Europe
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1. It’s a digital world
In 2013, European Advertisers spent over €100billion across 26 countries. The IAB Europe
AdEx Benchmark results also show that as European economies strengthened, digital
advertising outgrew all other formats, increasing 11% from 2012 to reach €27.3billion.
But as impressive as these numbers are, they still do not
represent the impact of digital on the broader marketing
landscape. This study found that digital is now a ubiquitous part
of the marketing mix, used by 98% of respondents in Southern
Europe and crucial to nearly half (Figure 1).
Figure 1 – Importance of digital to overall advertising strategy
However, with 10% reporting that digital is not very important or that they do not use digital
at all, this still leaves Southern Europe lagging behind the rest of the continent (where the
average is only 5%). There’s some catching up to do.
The digital world brings challenges and opportunities as brands seek to engage their
audience across many different channels, through a multitude of devices and at any and all
times of day. Now is the age of the always-on, always-connected consumer whose attention
span is shrinking ever shorter and whose access to information has redefined the path to
purchase.
Digital is the new frontline of the consumer experience. If you can’t identify and reach your
consumer online at just the point where they are receptive to your message, then someone
else can and will.
€27.3bn 2013 European digital
advertising spend
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2. Money can’t buy you love
The good news for those clutching the purse strings is that you don’t need the deepest
pockets to win. There was a time when media was in short supply and the big brands could
effectively own the consumer if the budget was large enough. Today, media is almost
infinite, money no longer guarantees success and it’s not enough to just be seen – brands
have to be relevant in their context to have any chance of cutting through the clutter and
engaging their audience.
In our research, advertising and marketing professionals were
emphatic that budget is no longer the key differentiator in campaign
success. Of course, almost every campaign could be made better if
there was a bit more money for creative or to push the reach just a bit
further; but this no longer determines success. In today’s world,
brands can reach and engage individuals like never before and it is
this ability to understand and respond to buying signals that drives advertising effectiveness.
Thus, while only 4% attribute success to a big budget, targeting has been thrust towards the
top of the pyramid at 17%, although this is still below the pan-European average of 24%.
Perhaps this is symptomatic of Southern Europe’s greater reluctance to adopt digital than
their continental counterparts, and helps to explain why Southern Europe is still relying more
heavily on bold, simple adverts to reach their aims (Figure 2).
Figure 2 – Most important factor behind a successful advertising campaign
5%
6%
6%
10%
16%
14%
24%
18%
4%
6%
7%
16%
16%
16%
17%
19%
Budget
Audience ‘interaction’
Personalisation
Bold & simple adverts
Visibility
Resonance of message
Targeting
Creativity
Creativity +
targeting
=
success
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3. Convergence in a real-time world
Since the first banner advert appeared in 1994, digital has held the promise of much better
targeting than had ever been achieved in conventional media, where the use of the socio-
demographic profile of the audience was an essential proxy for campaign targeting.
However, Display advertising has struggled to deliver on this promise, largely because
buying habits were carried over from traditional media. Even today, the traditional I/O is the
dominant media buying tool and over half of all respondents still rely on geo-demographic
targeting. As a result, Search and Social have grown faster than Display advertising and
have been ‘front of mind’ for most of the last decade when marketers plan their digital
strategies.
But there are signs of a change. Across Europe, the 2013 AdEx
Benchmark results indicate that over the past year Display
advertising grew faster than Search at 14.9%, to account for more
than €9.2billion in spend.
The acceleration of Display spending is indicative of major changes in the European media
landscape over recent years:
Advertising is no longer dependent on media as a proxy for audience; but can be
bought and sold at an impression level basis, i.e. targeting a single user
Social media is no longer free, with new advertising formats emerging and proving
essential to sustain reach
Mobile advertising is growing, bringing new opportunities to market
Measurement and analytics are improving
Organisations are accelerating to real-time consumer engagement
Real-time blurs the lines between Owned, Earned and Paid media with integrated planning
now breaking down internal silos.
Several metrics are already being used to respond to this change in the digital landscape. As
well as more conventional metrics such as geographical location (53%), a good proportion of
respondents in southern Europe are now using social behaviour (21%) and declared
attitudes and opinions (21%) to shape digital strategy and harness data in real-time across
their many digital touch points.
However, organisations in Southern Europe are slower to adopt targeting based upon the
type of device being used, with only 26% applying this metric compared to 37% across
Europe.
Display
growing faster
than Search
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4. Real-time requires a data-driven mindset
Real-time targeting is all well and good; but try achieving it within a conventional media plan
and it doesn’t take long for the cracks to appear. Where the twitter war-room might work for
the SuperBowl or the Oscars, it’s not scalable for every day.
The much-hyped but nonetheless real wave of ‘Big Data’ is
changing the way that marketers think about engagement
possibilities and the context of the customer conversation. What
started as website analytics and evolved into social media
listening is now the opportunity to ‘listen’ to billions of digital
touch points across the global web as they happen. Thus the scale and complexity of
targeting the right customer at the right time and in the right context exceeds the
conventional media plan. In fact, it exceeds any manual process.
With only one third of organisations in Southern Europe using programmatic (38% compared
to 55% in France and Benelux), there is still plenty of room for growth.
This is especially true as organisations in Southern Europe can see multiple benefits from
adopting programmatic – nearly half of organisations see improved targeting (a main driver
of overall campaign success) as a key benefit of programmatic.
Figure 3 – Key benefits of programmatic advertising
18%
20%
23%
26%
28%
32%
37%
38%
47%
Greater creativity
Cheaper advertising
Better value impressions
GTM faster
Track success of campaigns
Personalise adverts
Reduce wastage
React in real-time
Improved targeting
Programmatic =
competitive
advantage
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The benefits gained through programmatic are also seen to vary according to the type of
organisation:
Media buyers in particular see the benefits of reacting in real-time (47% vs. 38%
average) and better valuing of impressions (47% vs. 23% average)
Advertising agencies see greater benefits in being able to go-to-market faster (41%
vs. 26% average)
With all of these benefits in mind, the majority of organisations to have already adopted
programmatic across Southern Europe did so in order to gain a competitive advantage
(68%).
However, for many it was a dual-attack – just as competitive advantage drove from one
angle, so fear of becoming left behind also played its part. Over two-fifths (41%), said that
they adopted programmatic out of fear of becoming left behind if they didn’t adapt – the
highest level of anywhere in Europe.
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.5. Programmatic answers the real-time question –
that’s WHY it’s growing.
Because programmatic transforms the way that brands can use paid media – integrates it
and aligns it to the wider marketing engagement and makes it as accountable as search and
social – it’s growing fast! In fact, nine in ten Southern European respondents (86%) are
convinced that programmatic is the future of digital advertising – one in five (18%) think it will
be truly dominant – even when they may have reservations about their own organisation’s
ability to leverage this (Figure 4). And confidence levels across the rest of Europe are even
higher – on average 30% believe programmatic will be dominant, 42% in France and
Benelux!
The wealth of data collected via programmatic is also being
used to enhance business performance in real-time. In
Southern Europe, organisations are primarily using
programmatic data for determining future campaign strategies
– both programmatic strategies (84%) and non-programmatic
campaigns (55%). The use of programmatic data to help
determine strategies for non-programmatic campaigns is in
fact higher in Southern Europe (55%) than anywhere else on
the continent (39% average).
Programmatic isn’t just a way of displaying ads – it’s a way
of harnessing big data and putting it to work for business
growth.
Figure 4 – Role of programmatic in the future of digital advertising
18%
68%
14%
0%
Programmatic
data enhances
real-time business
performance
Southern Europe
using programmatic
data to inform
campaign strategy
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6. Getting to grips with programmatic
Despite programmatic’s obvious momentum, the research shows that current adoption is far
from evenly spread.
Not unexpectedly, media buying teams are leading the way.
Programmatic emerged first as a better way of buying and
selling fragmented and remnant publisher inventory – the
stuff that wasn’t being sold by the direct sales team and was
of uncertain value. Real-time Bidding’s (RTB) auction format
was an effective way to value that inventory and ensure that
it generated revenue. Because it valued the specific impression, the process had to happen
in real-time and value was derived from what was known about the user not the domain on
which the ad was displayed.
So today, 81% of media buying agencies in Southern Europe are using programmatic,
compared to 50% of advertising agencies, 32% of publishers and only 15% of marketers
(Figure 5). On a positive note, media buying and advertising agencies are further along the
path than their other European counterparts. However, the use of programmatic amongst
publishers and marketers is particularly low (32% and 15% vs. 48% and 22% average).
Figure 5 – Current use of programmatic by organisation type
With the greatest exposure, Media Buyers in Southern Europe
have built the deepest understanding of how programmatic
works and where it is best deployed (68% have a good
understanding). However, nearly one quarter of Marketers
(24%) have never even heard of programmatic, with a further
40% saying they know very little about it.
More marketers
have never heard
of programmatic
than use it
Disconnect
between media
buying agencies
and marketers
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This disconnect between media buyers and the marketers they serve is potentially the most
significant constraint on the move towards integrated real-time marketing. Whilst it’s possible
to argue that marketers don’t need to understand or implement programmatic strategies
when their agencies are there to do it for them, the fact that nearly one in four marketers in
Southern Europe (24%) had never previously heard of programmatic means they cannot
properly plan the role of advertising within their broader strategy. They do not know how
digital advertising can now extend the impact of TV through synchronised campaign bursts;
or how real-time social initiatives can be shared with a
much wider audience.
In short, too few marketers understand the potential scale
and speed of today’s advertising and will not properly
allocate budget for the media agency to really change the
game.
To overcome these hurdles, organisations will need to move quickly to put programmatic
strategies in place, something fewer than one third (28%) of organisations in Southern
Europe have so far managed to do – leaving them at a distinct disadvantage compared to
their European counterparts (Figure 6).
Figure 6 – Existence of programmatic strategies
Southern European
organisations lack
programmatic
strategies
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7. Navigating the obstacles
For those organisations in Southern Europe that have yet to adopt programmatic, it doesn’t
appear to be due to any scepticism over the model – only 2% say they don’t believe
programmatic is the future of digital advertising. Instead, by far the two biggest challenges
are skills gaps (36% vs. 29% European average) and a lack of budget (30% vs. 26%
European average).
So why is it that skills and budgets are so restrained?
Perhaps some of the issue comes as a result of an
‘unwillingness’ amongst senior decision makers to adopt
programmatic. One fifth of respondents in Southern
Europe stated that they were restrained from adopting
programmatic by dictated company policy (23% vs. 12% European average) and internal
resistance (20% vs. 11% European average). Delve another layer deeper and we discover
that one in six (15% vs. 13% European average) are worried about an apparent lack of
transparency between the buy and sell-sides.
Figure 7 – Barriers preventing programmatic adoption
Internal resistance and pre-determined dictated policies are issues that are especially severe
in Southern Europe and raise a number of interesting questions around the attitudes of
decision-makers towards programmatic.
However, skills shortage, budget availability and transparency concerns are all prevalent
across Europe. These are issues that the ecosystem will need to overcome in order to
harness the true potential of programmatic, so let’s look at them in a bit more detail...
Southern European
organisations face
internal resistance to
programmatic
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i. Skills shortages
By its very nature, programmatic requires a level of technical expertise that is outside of the
traditional agency or marketing skillset. However, as marketing has become a more
analytical profession over the last decade; the advertising industry is seeing an influx of
talent from social media and search as well as ‘big data’
analysts that would at one time have traded equities.
However, there is much progress that needs to be made.
A skills shortage is the biggest barrier preventing
organisations in southern Europe from adopting
programmatic (36%).
In particular, advertising agencies need to ensure that they are ‘up to speed’ as there is an
expectation on these organisations to coordinate all aspects of programmatic in the future –
two-thirds of respondents in Southern Europe (64%) told us that advertising agencies will
coordinate the technical aspects of programmatic. This therefore means that having a good
knowledge of programmatic will be a vital pre-requisite for a successful advertising agency.
Figure 8 – Role of advertising agencies in coordinating aspects of programmatic
52%
12%
31%
5%
Technical & creative Creative only
Technical only
Bypass agencies
Vital for advertising
agencies to have
strong programmatic
knowledge
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ii. Budget battles
Almost one third (30%) of organisations in Southern Europe
yet to adopt programmatic are held back by lack of budget.
Given that digital advertising budgets are growing, this is an
interesting anomaly. However, it reflects the current ‘silo’
approach of traditional media planning. The good news is that
this shouldn’t last for long. As programmatic continues to
grow and becomes the enabling technology for all kinds of media transactions, it will cease
to exist as a line item where specific budget allocation is required and will become instead
the de facto method by which the whole plan is executed. As a result, budget will no longer
be allocated to programmatic initiatives but rather the whole plan will be delivered
programmatically.
It is also possible that at this point in time, the cost of change to programmatic ways of
working is causing some of this hesitation. However, as early adopters are able to prove
their competitive advantage, and as innovation around SaaS business models continues to
lower the cost of adoption, the budget will become less of an issue.
Already, this research suggests that the benefits of programmatic are clearly established
with nine in ten industry professionals (86%) saying programmatic will be a very important
part of digital advertising in five years’ time; one in five (18%) think it will be dominant.
Budgets will be found… and quickly.
One third of non-
adopters held
back by lack of
budget
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iii. Trust issues
Digital advertising is a complex ecosystem and programmatic has, for many, added a new
layer of complexity to relationships and concerns around channel conflict. While the original
RTB model gave publishers a better way to monetise inventory, it was also criticised for
potentially driving down overall prices. What this research
shows is that programmatic is developing differently
across Europe to address the very different regional
ecosystems.
In Southern Europe there is an acceptance that a critical
step along this journey is greater specification, and
understanding, of target audiences. Two-thirds believe
that there should be greater specification of who sees adverts (64% vs. 62% European
average), one in five think specification of where adverts are displayed needs to be
tightened-up (43% vs. 37% European average), and one third want greater specification of
the times at which adverts may be shown (30% vs. 20% European average) .
And as these relationships develop between the buy and sell-sides, it will be vital to ensure
that healthy interactions are nurtured and maintained – something which may currently be at
risk. In our survey, nearly all professionals in Southern Europe (92%) feel that the
relationship between buyers and sellers of digital property is not completely transparent. In
fact, over half (51%) went as far as to say that it can at times be combative (Figure 9).
Figure 9 – Combative nature of buyer-seller relationship
While healthy competition is beneficial, ultimately organisations will need to work together
much more closely to achieve the best results. As programmatic evolves from transactional
RTB toward better enabling Deals and Direct transactions, it will be interesting to see how
this develops in the years to come.
.
Southern European
organisations
highlight a need for
greater specification
of campaign details
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8. Conclusions
Programmatic technology has come a long way over the past 8 years, on its journey to being
understood and embraced by all corners of the advertising ecosystem. This study has given
us a clearer view on WHY programmatic is expected to grow so fast and HOW publishers,
marketers and agencies are already using it effectively across Europe.
The programmatic approach is making it possible for digital advertising to be as dynamic as
social and as accountable as search. As boundaries between Owned, Earned and Paid
media blur and digital moves front and centre in the battle for consumer attention,
programmatic becomes the key to effective real-time engagement at scale.
But whilst Europe is witnessing huge growth in digital display advertising numbers, there is
still much room for improvement. Media buyers lead the charge with a clear understanding of
the benefits to their clients of better targeting and the ability to make real-time adjustments…
but then comes a cliff edge. Only half of advertising agencies, and fewer than one third of
publishers and one quarter of marketers, currently use programmatic in Southern Europe.
They highlight skills shortages as the main barrier.
Although the early adoption and innovation has been amongst media buyers, programmatic
is much more than a media buying tool – only when marketers recognise the benefits it can
bring will the advertising industry be ready to capitalise on its full potential.
Perhaps advertising agencies can provide the necessary short-term bridge. Whilst
knowledge levels are still limited within this audience, the ecosystem expects advertising
agencies to be coordinating all aspects of programmatic advertising in the future.
Either way, as consumers shift to mobile multi-screen engagement and advertisers follow,
the scale and complexity of the digital landscape will only increase. While programmatic has
brought clear benefits to the early adopters, it is fast becoming not just advantageous but
essential for brands to compete in a real-time world.
So it is more vital than ever for all parts of the ecosystem to grasp the opportunity with both
hands, and put a programmatic strategy in place; based on an understanding of WHY
programmatic is so important and HOW to make it work for them.
We hope that this research is a useful part of that process.
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